Beijing time on February 8, according to a number of media reports, former Chinese Olympic team coach Miroslav Blazević died of illness at the age of 85. Blažević had long struggled with cancer and died 2 days before his 86th birthday.
The greatest achievement of Blažević's coaching career was leading Croatia to a World Cup third place. He became Croatia's manager in 1994, led the team to the quarter-finals of the European Championship in 1996, and reached the semi-finals as a dark horse at the 1998 World Cup in France, eventually finishing third in that tournament.
Since then, Blazević has coached the Iranian team and led the team to a failure on the way to the 02 Korea-Japan World Cup. He became Bosnia-Herzegovina coach in 2008 and led the team to a defeat at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
In 2010, Blazević moved to the Chinese Super League and became the head coach of Shanghai Shenhua. In their first season in charge of the team, Shenhua finished 3rd in the league and qualified for the AFC Champions League. Due to his good results in coaching the Shenhua team, Blazević was recognized by the Chinese Football Association and became the manager of the national Olympic team.
After the 2011 Olympic team's defeat at the London Olympics, Blažević ended his coaching in China. Since then, Blazević has coached Iran Kerman, NK Zagreb, Sloboda and Zadar, but none of them have been successful.
While coaching the Olympic team, Blazević was diagnosed with cutaneous melanoma, which he had to undergo surgery to remove. Prior to that, in 2004, Blažević had prostate cancer.